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Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

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Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#131

Post by betamaxthetape »

Animats wrote: post #84

I came across a Cartrivision rewinder in a surplus store once. It was a simple device, with a motor, some limit switches, a key switch, and a counter. The counter tracked how many cartridges had been rewound, for billing purposes. Other bad ideas of that era: Polaroid once developed a VHS cartridge with a mechanical counter of how many times it had been played. After some number of plays, the tape jammed.

Do you have any more information on this? It sounds really interesting, and I'd love to learn more!

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#132

Post by yamtaddle »

iamdbtoo wrote: post #99
ghaff wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that matter, the licensing of the music on certain TV series didn't anticipate DVDs. Northern Exposure and WKRP in Cincinnati were missing a lot of the original music on the DVDs--although this is apparently partly corrected in the newer complete series releases.

Similarly, Beavis and Butthead has never had a release that mirrors the broadcast because of the music videos.

This shit is the entire reason I bother with piracy at all. I very, super-duper much don't want to maintain a media server, but I do want several things in their full, original versions (Beavis and Butthead is one, in fact, but there are several), or that flat-out can't be had otherwise, or whatever, and as long as I'm having to maintain the server anyway....

If they (all these companies) ever fully sort out audio rights, start providing great-quality copies of movies without screwing with them (the 4k77 and related projects are far and away the highest-quality copies of the original, unmolested Star Wars trilogy available, period, for any price, and they're entirely a very-expensive-to-produce volunteer fan-made effort, available for free! WTF?), stop cutting episodes, and stop revoking access to things, I can finally scrap that stupid server. It's 1000% not worth the cost and effort just to avoid paying for the things I watch. Buuuuut if I'm maintaining it anyway, for other reasons, well, that's another matter.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#133

Post by deadbeeves »

fknorangesite wrote: post #39
sschueller wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand? Why would you post a blog on the public internet and then have an issue over it being shared? It's not like HN is reprinting it and the discussions are interesting. I would not have know about this format if it hadn't been posted here.

> Why would you post a blog on the public internet and then have an issue over it being shared? Correction: an issue with it being shared on Hacker News . Foone has explained this themselves: https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1440375176604966924?s=20

I find it rather interesting that someone wants to write publicly and can't deal with others disliking specific aspects of their writing. Not that the readers tell the writer they don't like it, but the fact itself that the readers don't like it and that they tell that to each other. I'm not sure someone this ill-equipped to deal with dissent should be on the Internet.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#134

Post by Animats »

betamaxthetape wrote: post #131
Animats wrote: post #84

I came across a Cartrivision rewinder in a surplus store once. It was a simple device, with a motor, some limit switches, a key switch, and a counter. The counter tracked how many cartridges had been rewound, for billing purposes. Other bad ideas of that era: Polaroid once developed a VHS cartridge with a mechanical counter of how many times it had been played. After some number of plays, the tape jammed.

Do you have any more information on this? It sounds really interesting, and I'd love to learn more!

The play counter? Lots of patents in the 1980s. 3M, IBM, CBS, Polaroid. Dead end commercially.

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US4586101A/en

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#135

Post by pikminguy »

danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

In theory you could have some sort of multi head or rasterizing system scan every bit of the tape and construct a 2D map of the magnetization. It would have to be 2D because many tape formats have multiple tracks, not even in parallel. But decoding that data would be a nightmare that made optical character recognition look like child's play.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#136

Post by eternityforest »

pikminguy wrote: post #135
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

In theory you could have some sort of multi head or rasterizing system scan every bit of the tape and construct a 2D map of the magnetization. It would have to be 2D because many tape formats have multiple tracks, not even in parallel. But decoding that data would be a nightmare that made optical character recognition look like child's play.

Really? Couldn't you just 3D model the player and run the simulated tape through it? Pretty amazing if there's something a 70s mechanical device can do that a computer can't do easily.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#137

Post by eternityforest »

delecti wrote: post #70
danbruc wrote: post #56

I have always wondered if it would be possible to build a generic reader for magnetic tapes that essentially just scans whatever tape you throw at it and then it is up to some software to decode the content. I know close to nothing about the details of magnetic recording on tape, so maybe this is just not possible with reasonable effort, i.e. you could but you would need SQUIDs to make it work or something like that.

You might be surprised at how the signals are actually recorded on tapes. For VHS tapes for example, it's actually a series of stacked "diagonal" lines of signal. Imagine a sequence of symbols like \\\\\\\\\\\, except at any given horizontal point along the tape there are about 5 stacked traces of signal. They're also diagonal on audio cassettes, but much less "slanted" relative to the tape's length. I don't remember…

"Find the lines" seems to be a common image processing technique. If you had the 2D data couldn't you virtually scan along them with that?

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#138

Post by Dylan16807 »

brookst wrote: post #118
horsawlarway wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Morally - I don't see much difference, and think the push towards "rent everything, own nothing" is a bad, bad idea for social cohesion, economic equality, and general health and happiness. Realistically - there is a considerable difference in the resources required to create a digital copy of a good vs a physical copy. The digital good has the slight upside that when companies abuse consumers through predatory prici…

I always find it funny when people try to use "rent-seeking" as a pejorative. Like, yes, someone invested a lot of capital up front and hopes to make a profit by selling time-limited access to what they bought, thereby making the goods accessible to people who don't have the up-front capital. I can see preferring to own, but as a moral position, "rent-seeking" is synonymous with "risk-taking" and "access-providing."…

"Rent-seeking" is when there isn't risk. If you set up a new investment in a competitive market, and sell access, that's not rent-seeking.

In this scenario, the predatory pricing is a key aspect of how it becomes rent seeking, and a well-functioning market would not have predatory pricing. And the root issue is tied in to how current US copyright law has major flaws.

Re: Fun Fact: I own porn I can't watch

#140

Post by Dylan16807 »

sneak wrote: post #89
patapong wrote: post #73

Fascinating. These red tapes feel like a ridiculous and cumbersome idea. Thinking about it, their concept won in the end though, in terms of media consumption and ownership... Our current streaming services feel much more akin to these tapes, where you rely on a centralized entity to decide what you can watch and how, rather than infinitely repayable and transferable video tapes.

My NAS running Jellyfin would like a word.

Either you broke the law many times to fill that NAS, or you have massive gaps in content because those items have never been broadcast or released on disc.

So it doesn't disagree very well.

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